"Her eyes are bloodshot, her skin gaunt, but that only gives her a feral madness. She is a creature from nightmares. Her face was born in hell, and rises up from the fiery depths only to kill. Her beauty lies forgotten underneath, replaced by a face holding the deepest secrets locked in the back of imagination."

That's Bellatrix! ^^ Right there, that's her! Oh, I loved that bit so much. Your depiction of her is just spot on right the way through to the end and I reminded me so much of the book, in a good way, and yes I very very very much liked what you did with it. It's a little bit, well, a lot fabulous.

This was a great entry to the challenge and I'll be posting the results later today. Thanks for entering! :)

David Tennant on your banner? That's reason enough to write anything, disregarding the number of WIPS. I'd start six more if I could have David Tennant on a banner (if I had a plunnies that actually involved David Tennant... which I currently don't).

So first, I'm really sorry that its taken me so long to get round to leaving my challenge reviews... you know when life gets in the way and such. Yeah, it was one of those things. But I'm here now!

I really liked this idea. You've taken a lovely minor character and fleshed him out a bit and I loved that (you know me, love a minor character) so this was definitely a me-ish kind of story and I'm looking forwards to reading the next chapter! :)

Author's Response: David Tennant is an excellent reason for everything *nods*

It's all god. I've been bad about updating. I have it all hand written and not typed, so I've just been lazy to type it up. I hope I still have the notebook. Dang.

Minor characters are so much fun! :D Crouch was surprisingly entertaining to write. Thank you.

-Naida

(obviously, you are skilled in the art of leaving coherrent reviews. Teach me?)

I really really liked this. Your descriptions were powerful and definitely added another layer to Bart Crouch Sr. I could feel the conflict but also the overriding purpose he had to actually gain power, no matter what the cost.

Having him focus on the law in the beginning shows that he does need a force of concentration to hold him there, to realize that he isn't as strong as he thinks but then he feels like he overcomes the whispers about him, etc. I like that he's paranoid, it lends a certain air to him.

This was really well done. It's like he's a self-righteous preacher in the way he thinks and the ending lines.

xChar

Author's Response: Thank you so much and sorry it's taken me a week to respond to this! D: I really wanted to focus on description on this and flesh out some minor characters, so I'm really glad that came through. Crouch has to be paranoid, after all he did to persecute his own son and then keep him under the imperius curse. Thank you again! ♥

Ooh, The Christmas Fairy is delighted to be the first person to review this chapter! And what a chapter it is!

It's interesting to me, because today I have read your oldest stories, and your newest story, and it's a delight to see how much you have grown as a writer. The improvement is breathtaking - as is this chapter.

We get the full onslaught of Bella's madness. The opening few paragraphs describing her how the world now fears her, and how much she revels in it, was stunningly good. I can't even tell you how proud you should be of this.

Your use of the present tense it especially effective here - although have a read back through, because you did slip into the past tense on occasion. In particular take a look at the paragraph where Bella flashes her teeth.

You wanted to know if the pride and vanity came through - it really did, in spades! You did a marvellous job. I would actually love to see the stuff you took out:-)

I do have a couple of nit-picky things:
'Once, the stars in the sky shined just for her.' should read 'shone'

'They think that locking her behind iron in the darkness with weaken her' should be 'will' weaken her

'When she heard that he was gone, she thought that she’s never feel that incredible power again.' should be '...that she would never feel...'

Author's Response: Thank you once again, Christmas fairy! And thank you for that lovely card you sent for me. I totally didn't play the game three times...y'know...

I hope I've grown as a writer! The first stories I had to put you through were utterly horrible, so thank you for managing to get through them. And thank you for that compliment!

I really wanted Bella to be mad, but not quite as mad as she was after Azkaban. I actually wrote this chapter when I was supposed to be paying attention in class, and someone made a comment about a character in a book acting like they owned the world. So naturally, I thought of Bella, and wrote that into the chapter. And thank you soo much for the compliment! I will admit that I don't hate this as much as a lot of my other stories, but you just gave me a HUGE confidence boost. THANK YOU -insert heart-

Agh, tenses. Thanks for pointing that out. I don't usually write in the present tense, which is probably why I had a few slip ups there. And thanks for pointing out those typos. Will fix those as well.

Your reviews are the best present I could ever ask for, so THANK YOU SO MUCH. I LOVE YOU, CHRISTMAS FAIRY.

The Christmas Fairy offers Naida festive wishes, and congratulations on an excellent chapter!

Again, angst is not the Fairy's favourite genre, but this is very well written and engaged me immediately. There are some very complex emotions being played out here, but you expressed them very well. I really felt as though I got into Crouch's head. His coldness was believable and chilling too.

I think this particular challenge is actually really difficult, but you have a great idea and I'm really keen to see how it plays out.

Author's Response: Thank you so much, Christmas Fairy! I really do love all of your reviews, even if I fail at responding to them on time. I'm glad you liked the complexity of the emotions, because it was definitely hard for me to write. And yes, this challenge is so hard. *glares at acrules* But so much fun :D Thank you!

So basically any story written about one of the Crouch characters is automatically interesting because we're given such explicit characterization in the books, and it's fascinating to see how people interpret their characterization.

I think that you did a good job--tacking SR is especially a hard job because most often one runs the risk of simplifying him, but I think you've given a good jab at what's underneath his logical face.

I admittedly never thought of the idea that it was something in Crouch's youth/younger years that had made him strive to be somebody extraordinary--and something I find super interesting about this is that he chooses to be extraordinary by following rules. It's so contrary, but it makes sense the way you've written it. There's something that makes you feel bad for him in a way because you want him to just allow himself to feel the pain that seeing his son betray him absolutely MUST evoke...but he wants to be professional about it, and you understand that. It's totally true that people evolve anger from a place of pain, and I think you've handled Crouch sr's pain really nicely.

It's always something ironic that people who seek to make themselves larger than life look to institutions outside of themselves to find that strength. It's obviously a flawed approach to becoming actually powerful but it's the most convenient and obvious to take. You get the feeling from this story that Crouch hasn't really taken the amount of time a normal person does to get to know himself and that leaves him really vulnerable. I feel Crouch's desperation even though you don't explore it explicitly, and I think it's always a beautiful thing when a story can reach outside of itself that way.

The last two sentences are really nice--I like them a lot. Especially "All around him will burn." because it's not the logical way you'd explain it to someone who needed to understand the idea that everything is going to be destroyed, but the way that we speak to ourselves and especially the way we lack a social implement when we go all cray cray--it's very lovely.

I think you're doing a great job so far, and I'm happy to say that your characterization of Crouch is doing him a great justice :)

-lily

Author's Response: First of all, I am SO SO sorry for how long it's taken me to respond to this! Your review was incredible, and I wanted to respond to it properly but NaNo caught up with me >.< In any case, thank you for this absolutely wonderful review!

I have to actually say that I didn't really feel like Crouch was characterized explicitly in the books. I felt that because we saw him through Harry's POV, we didn't really get to know anything about him. I guess it's even better, then, that I managed to stick to canon :D I definitely was worried about the way I integrated his past in with the present, so I'm really glad to hear that characterization worked!

I'm actually really glad to hear you felt bad for Crouch. I wanted to give a little character to the man who would sentence his own son to prison, so this is what I came up with. You're spot on about the approach to power, however. I felt like Crouch didn't understand his own ambition, really. Like he was trying to be Minster of Magic without really understanding what he was undertaking. So that's how I wrote his appraoch, and I'm glad you liked it!

Those two lines were actually the first things I wrote for this story. Everything else seemed to work itself around them and it fit together nicely!

Thank you so much for the review! I can honestly say that it's one of the best I've ever gotten, and that I'm a horrible person for taking this long to answer. It nearly made me scream the first time I read it, because to me, a review like this says the most about a story. Thank you!!! *hugs*

This is perfect and I love it. Your descriptions here are fantastic - the descriptions of the prisoners, Crouch's thoughts...everything is carefully chosen and written about with such precision, it's quite admirable.

I love the end of this chapter. "He is a ball of fire. All around him will burn." I think it ends the chapter nicely and gives us a sense of anticipation as to what is to come - kind of gives us that anxious thrum that's present in that court room.

I like how you've made Crouch to be this man, desperate to really prove himself, to prove he's not average. I think it's an interesting take on an even more interesting character. It will certainly open our eyes a bit to the man that he is when he puts his own son into Azkaban.

I can't wait to see where you take this story so I'm glad to see it's pre-written. Nicely done! :)

Author's Response: -is dead-

You don't even know how much I'm blushing right now! I read your first three words about ten times to make sure I wasn't seeing things. I can't even describe how incredible this review was! Good thing I'm alone, because I literally screamed a little bit :P

I was so unsure of this story! It was my first thing after I was museless for a month, and i felt like I had lost any talent I may have had. I was so nervous to post it, because I thought no one would read it/ like it. Your review is absolutely AMAZING!!! Crouch is such a minor character, so I was really scared to write him as well. We know so much, yet so little, about him. Your review was literally perfection. I'm going to be reading this all the time xD